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Chocolate Dominoes
1/2 cup pecan nut meat ½ cup English walnut meat 1/2 cup figs 1/2 cup dates Grated rind 1 orange 1 tablespoon orange juice 1 square chocolate, melted Mix nut meats, figs, and dates, and force through a meat chopper, or chop finely. Add remaining ingredients, toss on a board sprinkled with powdered sugar, and roll to one-third inch in thickness. Cut in domino shapes, spread thinly with melted unsweetened chocolate, and decorate with small pieces blanched almonds to imitate dominoes. 1/3 cup butter 1 cup sugar 2 eggs Cream Pie I 1/2 cup milk 1¾ cups flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 2½ teaspoons baking powder Mix as One Egg Cake. Bake in round layer cake pans.
Put Cream Filling between layers and sprinkle top with powdered sugar.
An uncooked confection built entirely from dried fruit and nuts, held together by nothing but its own stickiness. The whole thing depends on chopping fine enough that the mass coheres when pressed.
- The hinge: chop to a pasteIf the fruit and nuts stay in recognizable pieces, the sheet will crumble when cut. A food processor pulsed until the mixture balls up against the wall of the bowl does the work of the old meat grinder; stop before it turns oily.
- Figs and datesUse soft dried figs with the woody stems removed, and pitted dates. If either is dry and hard, steam briefly or soak ten minutes in hot water and pat dry, or the paste will not hold.
- "1 square chocolate"A baking square is 1 oz. Note that the square is listed among the ingredients mixed into the paste; the chocolate spread over the cut pieces is called for separately in the directions, specified as unsweetened and left unmeasured, so you will need more than the one square if you also coat the tops. Melt it over hot water or in short bursts in a microwave; it seizes easily with no added fat.
- Powdered sugar on the boardThis is the rolling medium, standing in for flour. Keep dusting the pin as well; the paste is tacky and will lift if it grabs.
- Cutting the dominoesA third of an inch thick, cut into rectangles roughly 1 x 2 inches. Chill the sheet for twenty minutes before cutting and the edges stay square.
- The almond pipsBlanched almonds slivered small stand in for the domino spots. Press them into the chocolate while it is still wet; once it sets nothing will stick.
- Yield and keepingExpect roughly two to three dozen pieces from this quantity. They keep a week in a tin between sheets of parchment and firm up further as they sit.
The recipe's phrasing and the neighbouring 'Mix as One Egg Cake' / 'Cream Filling' cross-references point to the Boston Cooking-School tradition, though the page as reproduced does not establish where in the book the confection was filed. It belongs to a family of turn-of-the-century "uncooked candies" that go with the domestic meat chopper, a hand-cranked screw grinder that made short work of sticky dried fruit and put nut-and-fruit pastes within reach of the home kitchen. The conceit of shaping food to imitate something else, whether dominoes, playing cards or dice, turns up in the era's party-refreshment writing, where such things were expected to amuse. Unsweetened chocolate for the black face and blanched almond for the pips is a neat solution, and neither needs cooking.